Terrorism Bill

: I rise to respond to the Home Secretary and to speak to amendments (b) and (a) to his amendment in lieu. The Home Secretary has failed to explain the scope of his proposal, from which flows a large number of the problems with which the House is grappling. He came close to touching on that matter a moment ago, but whenever he comes close to it, he veers off, because an explanation would make nonsense of the Government’s entire argument. The glorification of terrorism is not being made an offence, thank goodness. If the glorification of terrorism on its own were made an offence, it would mean, as we have said on many occasions, that anybody who celebrates Robin Hood, the peasants revolt or Spartacus would be liable to prosecution. Furthermore, the poor old Taoiseach would be liable to prosecution when he comes over here after celebrating the Easter rising next month in Dublin, which he intends to do. Mercifully, that is not the Government’s objective. The Government’s approach must be based on the Prime Minister’s ego, because there is no other rational explanation. Having produced a Bill which contains draconian and powerful provisions to criminalise the indirect encouragement of terrorism—something that we support—the Home Secretary has insisted on including in clause 1(4) a most extraordinary subsection, which suggests that the courts should have particular regard to an example that he is offering, which is the possibility that glorification falls within the scope of indirect encouragement. At the same time, he has provided the suggestion that members of the public would reasonably be expected to infer that what is being glorified is being glorified as conduct that should be emulated by them in existing circumstances—I think that the Taoiseach would still be in some difficulty, because quite a few people in Northern Ireland think that any celebration of the Easter rising does exactly that. The key point is that every single judge and lawyer to whom I have spoken has highlighted that including such a concept is woolly, opaque and unclear, that the word, ““glorify””, is not known in our law and that the definition of ““glorify”” as praise or celebration is very poor. The provision appears to be deliberately aimed at people who might wish to celebrate as part of their culture episodes that would fall within the Government’s catch-all definition of terrorism. Above all, it is entirely unnecessary in meeting the Government’s objective, and the Home Secretary has said nothing this afternoon to explain why it needs to be included in the Bill.